Flowers From The Storm (30 page)

She’d begun to walk, having no better idea. A safe haven, that was what she must find for him. No matter the reprisal that faced her, she had to get back to Papa by evening—he would be frantic that she had disappeared with the duke. She had no clear idea of what broken laws and criminal acts she might be taxed with, but Lady de Marly would be sure to know them all. Maddy was certain of that. For herself, she thought with a rather tenuous bravery, she didn’t mind so very much— Jervaulx was her Opening, after all, and any Sufferings that came with him must be borne—but she was afraid of what might become of her papa if she were to be sent to prison.

The pressure of his hand pulled her to a stop. Just in front of them, on the loud blast of a horn, a day coach for Brighton clattered out from beneath the sign of the Belle Sauvage, wheeling into the street with the guard blowing enthusiastically for right-of-way.

As soon as it passed, disappearing into the shifting screen of traffic and black mist, Jervaulx drew her toward the inn yard gate. Beneath the passageway, a stableboy wielded a deft rake, scooping dirt and droppings from their path, skipping backwards with a quick muttered salute as they passed.

Travelers stood about inside the yard, waiting next to their trunks and valises and piles of bundled belongings. Another coach was loading, the yellow-and-black for Newmarket, the horses fresh, rattling their shoes against the cobbles and blowing frost.

Jervaulx went directly to the booking office. He handed Maddy in the door, with a little extra push as if she might need encouragement. The crowd inside around the desk barely admitted two more. Even as outlandishly as Maddy and the duke were dressed, no one paid the least mind, the clerks too busy flinging brown-paper parcels into the tower of pigeonholes behind the desk, the customers calling out questions or trying to engage the attention of some porter.

He pulled her into a tight corner, turned his back on the gathering and leaned over to her ear. “
Go
,” he said, not achieving an actual whisper, but it hardly mattered in the common racket.

Maddy looked at him. “Where?”

The question appeared to exasperate him. “
Go
,” he repeated. “Two.”

“Not I,” she said firmly.

A lady with a pair of little girls on her arms edged past behind him, working her way to the end of the shortest queue. Jervaulx put his hand on Maddy’s shoulder. “Two,” he insisted.

“I cannot.”

His fingers pressed into her. “
Home
. Shere—” He clenched his jaw with effort. “—voh!”

It didn’t seem an entirely absurd notion, except that she had no idea where his home might be, or whether he could travel there alone—without being tagged, like a child or a trunk, or an idiot, which was vision enough to chill her. And his home would be no protection from his family’s power to send him back to Blythedale.

“Home,” he urged. “Maddygirl.”

“Where is it?” she asked. “Where?”

That seemed to foil him. He scowled, released her and turned her around bodily. On the wall she’d been leaning against were posting bills and a shellacked and yellowing tourist’s map of England, the varnish in the vicinity of London rubbed through and cracking from all the wear. He put his hand on a part of the map that had hardly deteriorated at all, far to the west, where the green of England met the red of Wales.

“No! Thou canst not go that distance alone.”

He caught her shoulders again. She felt him move closer against her back, almost an embrace. He pressed his cheek to her hood, dislodging it from covering her hair, and made a sound of insistence. He wrapped his arms around her and held her back against him, right there amid the stagecoach passengers.

“
Two
,” he said in her ear. “Home.”

She tried to scramble away, but he wouldn’t allow it. He let her turn, then trapped her there against the map and the wall. She hardly knew what to do. Some of the customers were looking at them. She imagined their shock and censure, what they must think of her in a torn skirt and no bonnet, locked in a man’s arms. He leaned his mouth next to her ear.

“Maddygirl…
wed
.”

Several more customers walked into the room, brushing close behind Jervaulx. One of them kept on his hat, the broad-brimmed, unmistakable insignia of a Quaker. Maddy ducked her head in horror. She hadn’t caught sight of who it was, but any visiting Friend with business here might know her from Yearly Meeting, and all too many from London itself would know her very well. She buried her face in Jervaulx’s shoulder for concealment. He caught her close, with a soft, willing murmur in his throat.

She did not dare look up. She didn’t struggle. He was a shield against discovery, large and solid enough to hide safely behind—if only he would not slip his hand up beneath her hood that way, brushing it fully back and wrapping his fingers round the nape of her neck, pulling her closer yet, resting his face against her hair.

She couldn’t imagine that everyone in the room didn’t turn and gasp and point in condemnation. But the normal sound of business went on about them, the clump of shoes passing in and out the door, the porters’ calls, the Newmarket coach’s horn as the team turned into the street.

His hand slipped from her waist. She felt him work at something in his coat; all the while she did not venture to lift her head and risk being seen. He groped for her hand and pressed a small box into it.

Maddy held the container, keeping her head down, looking a little to the side to try to see if the unknown Friend had departed yet. Jervaulx made her turn her hand over. With an impatient mutter, he pushed his thumb awkwardly against the box in her palm.

The lid opened. Hiding as she was, her face lowered, she saw gold and multicolored fire. A ring—a wide filigree band with seed pearls around a vivid opal—for Anne Trotman?

He fumbled at it one handed, got his forefinger halfway through the ring, and let the box fall. In this small corner, with their heads lowered together, they created a tiny private world. Maddy watched in perplexity as he worked the ring around into his hand, and then tried to slide it onto her finger.

“
Wed
.” He put his lips against her ear. “Maddy…
wed
. Home.”

She stared at the ring, at his fingers as he pushed it forcibly onto hers.

“No!” She pulled the opal free and stooped to retrieve the box, yanking her hood firmly over her head.

“Thou art—it is not—
no
! However didst thou invent such a scheme?”

She shoved the box into his palm and turned. With the hood clasped close to her face, she forced her way through the press of travelers and hurried into the yard. Outside, she rushed a few feet from the door and stopped, her face burning. She held her hood over her mouth and nose.

The duke came out of the office door. She was in plain sight, but he didn’t seem to see her. He halted, a bizarrely splendid gentleman amid the ordinary surroundings: a lost courtier, rich with velvet and heavy embellishment, with his royal blue sash and medallion, lost in more than place and time.

People turned to look at him. Maddy saw the rigid unease in his stance. He stood immobile where he’d stopped, as if one step in any direction might be into a cavern that opened at his feet. His jaw was tight, his dark brows drawn down. Arrested force, alone and alien.

He scanned the yard. Maddy was quite close to him, within a touch of his right hand, and yet she might have been one of the pieces of baggage scattered in piles about the court. He didn’t even look her way.

He only radiated high-strung tension, a spiraling stillness—a man ready to splinter.

She said his name, muffled behind the cloak. His bearing changed. He turned toward her as if she’d broken a spell, the release like a bright flame in his face. It seemed to startle him that she was so close; he took an aggressive step and moved to catch her by both arms.

“Not…
leave
!” he said savagely. “ ”Lone…
can’t
! Stay. You…
stay
!“

“I don’t know what to do with you!” Maddy bit down on the woollen hood as she held it to her mouth.

“I can’t stay with you! I can’t take you back!”

“Sher—” He put his palms against her shoulders and gave her a sharp push. “—
voh
!” He gave her another, making her take a step back. “
Home
.” A push. “
Marry”
—push— “
Maddy”
—push—“
girl

!”—push—“
Yes
!” Under his coercion, she was progressing unevenly backward across the yard. “Not…

mad…
place
! Marry…
Maddy
!”

“No!” she said, then sucked in a panicked breath and twitched her hood as far she could over her face to conceal herself. In somber hat and plain coat, the Quaker from the ticket office approached them.

Maddy peered from inside her hood as the stranger laid a hand on Jervaulx’s arm. “Think a moment, Friend. Thou are importunate.”

Jervaulx gave him a look as if the man had just spit in his face. For a vibrating instant, she was afraid that he would turn and strike out, the way he’d done to Cousin Edward. The Quaker was only a medium-sized man, no older than Maddy herself—clean shaven and clear-eyed, no one whom she recalled seeing before. A good man, courageous to confront Jervaulx, who was so clearly angry and an aristocrat, with nothing insignificant about him, either in conduct or in build.

The duke shook off the restraining hand. He looked hotly at Maddy, as if expecting her to explain.

“I thank thee, Friend,” she said quickly, anxious to placate Jervaulx. “But I need no help.”

The Quaker gave her a startled glance. Maddy felt her heart drop.

“Thou are in the Life?” he asked.

She looked at the ground. Wicked lies sprang to her lips, immoral deceptions to retrieve the mistake that had revealed her to another Friend more clearly than a Quaker bonnet and Plain Dress would have done.

But she could not; he was no threat to Jervaulx, it was only to save her own stature in front of one of her fellow members.

She barely lifted her eyes. “I am.”

Jervaulx grasped her elbow. It was a silent touch, not harsh, but firm. He watched the Quaker warily.

“He doesn’t bedevil thee?” the man asked. He met Jervaulx’s look. “I’d not suffer thee to lift a hand against her. Will thou compose thyself and walk peaceful?”

It was a quiet inquiry, almost kind. Maddy felt a surge of gratitude and affinity. This man seemed an island of sense in a storm of uncertainty, so much more familiar in his broad plain hat and simple coat, so much more trustworthy than an incalculable, angry stranger in velvet and medallion and royal sash.

The Quaker appeared troubled at Jervaulx’s lack of response. “Thou will not answer as an honest man?”

Jervaulx’s grip on her arm grew painful.

Maddy touched the Quaker’s rough broadcloth sleeve. “Friend,” she said softly, ignoring Jervaulx’s increasing pressure on her arm, his silent attempt to pull her from the newcomer’s range. She was forming a new purpose. “I spoke idle words in haste, to say that I need not thy help.” She lifted her eyes to the level, steady inquiry in the young man’s gaze. “I’m in true want of aid. Canst thou give assistance?”

“Surely,” he said—a single word that lifted a thousand pounds from Maddy’s shoulders.

While Jervaulx sat disposed in an attitude of majestic disapproval, his chair pushed away from a table in the public dining parlor, his legs outstretched, his arms crossed over starburst and sash, Maddy bent close to the young Quaker and related her difficulty. Richard Gill took a sip of ale and looked thoughtfully at the duke when she’d finished.

Jervaulx, brooding and defiant, glared back beneath his black lashes. He had not wished to come into the dining room; he’d tried to prevent her, but when Maddy refused to be held back, he’d followed, not allowing her to move a step beyond his immediate reach. He didn’t speak, and Maddy couldn’t tell how much he understood of what she said to Richard Gill, but his whole demeanor was of betrayed dignity, as if she offended him with this new connection.

Richard remained silent, a somber and thinking pause. Maddy waited, glad to be again with a person who was not so quick with words or action but took time to consider. She was content to bide in Richard’s contemplation. The young Friend was handsome, with composed moves and a resolute air that invited confidence. His strong face suited the deep-brimmed hat and unadorned coat better than did many a solemn elder’s.

Maddy was certain he’d never attended London Yearly Meeting, where Friends met to conduct their annual business and query the smaller Quarterly and Monthly meetings as to their spiritual state. Yearly Meeting gathered Quaker families together from all over England. She would have recalled it if Richard Gill had been a delegate. It didn’t require direct attendance at Men’s Meeting for all the women to know who was prominent and who was not—and who was unmarried and who was not.

It was axiomatic that if a young woman wished to wed, her best course was to attend London Yearly Meeting, where one of the chief duties of the Meeting of Women Friends there was to look into hopeful couples’ clearness for marriage— a process that naturally lent itself to appraisal and ordering by their suitability of the other eligible bachelors in attendance. Richard Gill, Maddy was quite certain, had not yet been brought to the attention of Women’s in any regard, nuptial or otherwise. She was not quite certain what his business must be. He’d come to the coach office to retrieve a sturdy small box that he seemed heedful to manage with great care. It sat now on the table beside him, labeled with a series of circles designated by such curious titles as “Claudiana, 4th row, rose,” “Trafalgar Banner, 1st row, byblomen,”